Since my last comment was arguing for a wrathless God, per Rene Girard and Julian of Norwich, I can't help but wonder if this post is a reply. It's a good reply. I like the reminder that Paul's sense of the curse we are living under is not personal but collective. I have to think of the extreme weather disasters set underway by climate change. When your house is washed away by a hurricane, we don't believe in a Zeus who is aiming his thunderbolts at you personally. The key question for Christians is, what kind of God does Jesus reveal? More to the point: what kind of God does Jesus reveal that he can only reveal by going to the cross? The cross was the Big Scary Or Else employed by Rome to keep its subjects obedient. You better listen, or else. This will be your curse, your condemnation. I think it makes a big difference whether we understand God as a bigger Rome, with a bigger punishment for us all if we don't listen, or as a cruciform Creator who, as Simone Weil understood, renounced power when he set into motion a creation with natural consequences, in parallel with the Son who renounced power when he went to the cross, leading his disciples to look back and reinterpret the entire tradition in the light of the Messiah as the Suffering Servant (Luke 24:27)
Since my last comment was arguing for a wrathless God, per Rene Girard and Julian of Norwich, I can't help but wonder if this post is a reply. It's a good reply. I like the reminder that Paul's sense of the curse we are living under is not personal but collective. I have to think of the extreme weather disasters set underway by climate change. When your house is washed away by a hurricane, we don't believe in a Zeus who is aiming his thunderbolts at you personally. The key question for Christians is, what kind of God does Jesus reveal? More to the point: what kind of God does Jesus reveal that he can only reveal by going to the cross? The cross was the Big Scary Or Else employed by Rome to keep its subjects obedient. You better listen, or else. This will be your curse, your condemnation. I think it makes a big difference whether we understand God as a bigger Rome, with a bigger punishment for us all if we don't listen, or as a cruciform Creator who, as Simone Weil understood, renounced power when he set into motion a creation with natural consequences, in parallel with the Son who renounced power when he went to the cross, leading his disciples to look back and reinterpret the entire tradition in the light of the Messiah as the Suffering Servant (Luke 24:27)